It's all a matter of perspective

Had to "Fix" the KLH Subwoofer... again

Last night for about 2 hours, the subwoofer started making odd noises like it was receiving some odd RF interference. It's done it before. I remember pointing a cordless phone at it once, pressing a button on it, and it went off. It was annoying and even when I shut off the subwoofer, the sounds would persist. It was just as oddly coincidental that it would stop making noises when Bones finished airing.

This morning when I fired it up to check how it was doing now (and no longer making spurious noises) it had a decidedly less than desirable response. Choppy. Gritty. It wasn't a warm bass response. Great.

So I decided to open it up like last time and see if I spot those slightly out of spec solder points again. And I do, as well as testing with the chopstick to see how it responded. And it was the same kind of thing. So I fired up a soldering iron and touched the one spot I found and sure enough, the solder disappeared. So I find my solder and re-do that spot and check a couple of others. Plug it in and fire it up, tap the circuit board - no more of that sign of a component not connecting to the circuit. Nothing loose!

As a result of all that, I had to figure out how to re-calibrate the settings on the back of the subwoofer so that it was at an optimal level for crossover and volume. The technique I discovered was to set the Dolby receiver at a common volume level (50) and then play something with the DVD player to make sure the bass response is warm, clearly heard, and resonates in the room without sounding localized, something I remember reading in the instruction booklet.

I wonder if these KLH subwoofer circuits run hot because of seeing this one actually melting the solder in the smallest of margins to make it go out of spec. Either that or the solder melts too easily, or the components weren't soldered in that great to begin with. As I seem to recall, this subwoofer did this same thing years ago. It worked well, then went sputtering for bass response, before just not working at all.

Those square metal plates on roads

I decided I was going to figure out what those square metal plates you find on roads around here are. 

As it turns out, and how they're used at least in Stark County Ohio, they are considered to be surveyor benchmarks used to mark things like the center line of roads. I was able to find a webpage that has some GIS data released that indicates where these are. The compressed file is about 5.26MB, and considering there's a lot of these surveyor benchmarks, that file size sounds about right. Only thing is, you have to use Google Earth Pro if you want something to easily and directly import that data. There appear to be tools to do it without Google Earth Pro, but with 50 MEGS of data, I'm not going to even begin.

I just wanted to know what they are. And I found out.

Fun little digital picture frames

A friend kindly handed to me this little video playing digital picture frame to play with. It has an onboard 111MB flash drive and plays Xvid/MP3 AVI video files. Until I get something to fill it up and run for an hour, right now it's playing an Ika Musume music clip. Oh and if I forget to rename the video to '00.avi' I found out you have to hold down the button while turning it on, then it will stay on long enough to have WinXP recognize it. I had to look it up to fix that goof. Thank goodness I did.

You know, if someone wanted to be extra evil, they could sneak in to some stores with these displays with a little netbook laptop, plug these little annoyances in and put nasty clips on these things. Oh the fun they could have.

The video file that used to be on it was 480x272 and 15mb big. I wish it would play every file you could fit onto it, but apparently it's not made that way - or could it be made to do that? I don't have a manual for it, so I don't know.

Aldi's FAIL

Some book prices are just INSANE

What is it with Sugar Sugar Rune manga? Volumes 4 and 8 are rip-off priced more often than not, and then those volumes are either Sold Out or some seller lists the Spanish editions. And the one copy of SSR V.8 that I do find for $13, the seller shipped it Media Mail and promptly did not arrive when it should have. I got a refund, the seller apologized for not having a 2nd copy in stock. Well, crap, if you saw the prices, you'd think someone stole my copy and sold it for drug money.

I managed to get SSR books 1 to 5 off eBay from a seller in Alaska of all places and ended up being $6 a book. Vol.6 and 7 aren't so expensive, but V.8?? What did Del Rey do? Print it with gold?

I found another not-as ripoff priced copy of V.8 of Sugar Sugar Rune but still more than reasonable, and this time it better arrive. AND IT BETTER NOT BE IN SPANISH.

Idiot

Guy at the gas pump at Sam's Club didn't pay attention to which side of his vehicle the filling cap is on.

Junction boxes are good, mmkay?

The sign I posted

So the shut off problem was cleverly averted with a junction box (of sorts) that was put in at some point. Now we have the locals waking me up at 9:15 am by pressing the door bell. At both back and front doors. You've just activated my pissed off card. Anyway, I posted a sign by the front door, wrote "Hands off!" and "You're being videotaped" on the old heaters with a Sharpie during which I was spotted, so I got back inside and locked all the doors.

It's a simple case of physics, right?

So let me get this straight. No electricity needed to be turned off except for the circuit that went to the old electric water heater when it was removed, but now that a new one is being installed, ALL ELECTRICITY to the place has to be turned off?

Big sis came over to begin a look at things and warns me that she "might" have to turn the electric off, meaning ALL electric, just to install something that already has the electric to it turned off. I warn her that if she turns off ALL electric, the TV which I've been having problems with might not turn back on. I see absolutely no need to turn all the electric off for a circuit that's already off and was off when the old wires were being disconnected from the old heater. By that logic, shouldn't have all electric been shut off THEN?

I don't know if she got irked at me telling her that she shouldn't need to turn all electric off, because she comes back with that I don't know what she'll need to do to hook up the new heater, among other things, took a look at something, then left.

If I can replace electrical sockets without turning off a breaker, she should be able to hook up electric service to a water heater on a circuit that's already off without depriving the rest of the place of electric. It's simple physics. Don't Cross The Streams.

Fixed the bass subwoofer!

This is just another example of messing with something in a different way leading to an unexpected solution. I've been trying to remember what the last thing was that I fixed in this manner - while messing with something in a different way that I probably would not think of right away leading to the solution of fixing it. But today lead to fixing the subwoofer for the Dolby sound system, which hasn't worked in 10 years since we moved out of the house on Euclid.

When Mom lost the house due to foreclosure 10 years ago, we packed up everything and minimally unpacked some things at my grandparents' house. One of the things that did not get set up was the Dolby sound system. It wasn't until when we moved in where we ended up did that get pulled out - and in fact I had to look for the subwoofer because I forgot which box it was in.

When I brought it down, it still powered on but the speaker wasn't doing anything. Not knowing what the problem was, it just sat unplugged and unused. Which was a shame since Mom spent so much on the speakers, bought at Circuit City.

Thankfully, instead of tossing it out like so many others would have, we left it sit where I put it. Eventually it would get fixed or replaced, right? And in all this time, I kept bringing up the idea that I would at least try to figure out what the problem was, but due to lack of energy, I wouldn't touch it for a while. Life just went on around it. Things got piled on it from time to time. This thing sounded GREAT when it worked back in town. It's a shame it stopped working. Or did it?

It would power up, light up the LEDs on the back (for Off or On), but the speaker would do nothing. Not like it's supposed to - a nice big loud Thump when turned on. So it's getting power but why not the speaker?

Today I finally decided I had enough of this nonsense and opened it for the 3rd time (must be anyway) looking for obvious signs of component failure. No leaking capacitors. No burst or burnt transistors - I don't even have a tool to test those components. I looked it over and couldn't find anything. I tested the speaker, and it did make a noise as I checked the impeding resistance (aka impedance) and even registered a value. OK, so why isn't it working?

I checked where the connector for the subwoofer went into the 2nd board (the power board presumably) and saw where some of the circuit traces went. I couldn't tell a thing. It wasn't until I was putting it back together out of defeat that I decided - Hmm, maybe the relay that turns it on in Auto mode isn't doing enough to connect? Thinking of something my dad would have done, I got out a wood back scratcher, and while turning on the subwoofer from Off, began tapping it, and that's when the speaker started to suddenly show some signs of doing something. Hmmm....! 

So further tapping and slight pressing on the power board started to yield interesting results. There was a solder connection that somehow went a bit out of spec to the point where it should be visible and a simple connection somewhere just needs a little heat and solder to make it work again. I found one spot that looked like it needed it, but still didn't have it nailed down yet. Some more tapping with a chopstick brought me closer to the immediate local area where somehow the solder connection just didn't work anymore, gave them all decent heat and a touch more solder, and tested it.

Turn on and THUMP! The speaker is working again!! HOLY CRAP. Was this the problem? A slightly less than decent soldering job that went out of spec by an invisible micrometer? The tapping helped me find the part of the circuit board where the problem was, and careful precise probing (shut up) helped me localize more of the solder points that needed touched up. I tried looking at solder points that just didn't look right, and eventually got them, hopefully all of them.

It's a big difference between what I had been hearing and what I can get out of my DVDs now.
And I saved a LOT OF MONEY being able to fix it myself.